02 September 2004

Letting Go

Sometimes I miss acting. One day soon I shall try to do a show: I'd like to do a show where I get to have a British dialect. Maybe it's the fact that Vanity Fair came out yesterday. There's something about all of those old books: Somerset Maugham and William Makepeace Thackeray and D.H. Lawrence and Jane Austen and E.M. Forster and I suppose Henry James and all of those people that just appeals to me. I love all of that old pageantry and classism. Or maybe it's the outfits that I love. I really need to see Maurice again. Maybe I'll buy it. I will see Vanity Fair one day soon.

I wonder why there are so few movies coming out this weekend. Labor day must be the weekend when studios don't release their movies. We're all just waiting for the good movies to come out... they start rolling the weekend or two after Labor day.

9/17: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, Želary and Infernal Affairs (finally).

9/24: The Motorcycle Diaries, John Waters' A Dirty Shame and The Last Shot.

10/1: Shark Tale and Around the Bend.

10/8: Friday Night Lights.

10/15: Stage Beauty, I Heart Huckabees and Being Julia.

And I don't know about any of you, but I am definitely seeing the Christmas movie with Ben Affleck and definitely avoiding the one with Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis.

By the time November hits we'll be getting two or three movies a week that have buzz on them. And then the National Board of Review will release their top ten and start the Oscar Talk. I can't wait. I hate it when all the critics have seen all the films and I'm sitting around waiting for them to be released so I can be in on the movie-joy that is December in Hollywood.

Linda asked me to be involved in her production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Peter Uribe is directing again (he did a long-ish production of Romeo & Juliet last year). I think I might've already said yes, and I feel like I really should do it, even if I don't want to, just because I haven't acted in anything since February or so and I start to forget how to do it.

There's a song by Hem that says He holds on to what he knows so he takes ahold of me. Maybe that's what John is all about. He was telling me last night that he just doesn't know how to let go of his relationships. See, you would think that it would be easy for him to let go of me as a friend: we have dissimilar interests, and he doesn't like gay people, just as two examples. But I'm not. I didn't talk to him for six months, and then he calls up as though we're the closest of chums and wants to spend time together. Before 2 weeks ago, I had seen the man twice in two-and-a-half years. Since August 18th I have seen him three times. How does this happen?

And Jaime asks me how I can stand for him to speak the way he speaks: how I keep myself from exploding with rage at him for the way he refers (even offhandedly) to homosexuals. I tell her that I imagine physically receiving the things he says, holding them in my hand, and then dropping them onto the ground. If I don't do this, I won't be able to even look at him. "But how do you look at him the same?" she asks. "I don't." It's awful to say, I know, but he's honestly nothing to me. I can take him or leave him. He wants to spend time with me and so I spend time with him. But it's because he asks for my time and for no other reason.

But the interesting thing is that he spends time with me because he doesn't know how to let me go. If he lets me go he has failed. But the only way that I can spend time with him is if I let the things he says go.

And I write this here to publicly acknowledge when I do things like this: I changed my clothes because I was going to see him yesterday. I looked really really good yesterday before I went to visit him, but I was wearing tight jeans and a polo about two sizes too small. It looked great, but it was unmistakeably queer. I justified it to myself: I wanted to wear my brand new shoes, and the polo didn't go with the shoes, but it was the shirt that I needed to change. So I changed into a dark burgundy 1MX and my new pale leather shoes. I just didn't want to go see John looking like a fag. I mean, I did anyway, because I really don't have any straight-looking clothes anymore, but the effect was decidedly less gay. (And by gay I mean gay as in homosexual.)